Zephyr Silver background

[Phil Ressler]

Please bear with my long first post here. It is posted in three parts to get around the forum's archaic 5000 character limit. I’m Phil Ressler, the CEO of Seymour Duncan since July 15, 2010. I haven’t posted here before now but I’ve been following threads in this forum for many years. Watching the conversation here and elsewhere regarding our Zephyr Silver pickups, I want to offer a more complete perspective on why we introduced this series, what we want to accomplish, and what to expect. But first, since Zephyr Silver exists because I asked for it, perhaps some background is in order.

I’m happy to answer questions about me, but just a few points to begin: I’ve been spending my own money on guitars since 1968 and on high-end audio since 1974 all while my education and career were developed outside the music realm. I care about tone in guitar as much as any of you but I’m also fully willing to believe everyone here is a better guitar player than me. When it comes to the sound of guitar, I know what I’m after and what I like but I’m not really trying to copy other players. Sound quality of anything pertaining to music is acutely important to me, but I’m not a slave to endless tweaking. Guitar and hi-fi objectives are different for me, but I don’t hesitate to borrow from either when there’s advantage to doing so.

I've also been continually immersed in the equivalents to gearhead forums online in software since long before the web became a public utility, going back to the early programmer forums on Compuserve around 1982. No barbs gnarly guitar players might fling our way are unanticipated, upsetting, nor surprising. Software developers yield to no one in the temperature of their invective, irreverence and disdain for vendors when they're offended, and that's the loyal & friendly customers I'm referring to. We knew we'd inevitably take some heat from some circles for introducing Zephyr Silver and I'll live with that.

Seymour Duncan is among the most revered brands in guitar. I’m reminded of this in nearly every conversation I have with guitarists I meet, and got a freight train’s worth of evidence of this in four days at NAMM. Anything we do in product, policy, business practice, service and attitude has to be carefully considered. And then there’s the man, Seymour W. Duncan. It’s illuminating for a music instrument industry outsider like me to see the love, appreciation and respect showered on Seymour by a parade of the best guitar musicians and builders at NAMM and elsewhere. The team managing Seymour Duncan (the company) takes this legacy very seriously. At the same time, everyone should realize that the company is more than Seymour, and product development springs from several contributors. One more thing – my arrival doesn’t signal any reduction in Seymour’s contribution to the business. In fact, I and my team are purposely pulling Seymour more deeply into the business and its product development.

Now, Zephyr Silver. A few months ago, I asked my team to think about what they would do to advance passive pickup design if they were free of the constraints of tradition. I fully understand the conservatism of guitar players as buyers, but if pickup design is to move forward, there will have to be some breaks with the past. No one can make the case that Seymour Duncan pays insufficient attention to tradition in its product line, so who better than us to also chart a path to what’s next in guitar sound? We have the technical chops to R&D our options, and we have enough scale as a company to look back and ahead at the same time. Silver wire was my suggestion as a start, but it would survive only if it provided a sound and expression improvement.
Relevant sidebar: Soon after I joined the company, I learned that the factory occasionally made small and innocent changes in materials for legitimate production reasons. Customers expect ever-higher levels of workmanship, fit and finish, plus we owe them consistency in performance so you’re not shooting craps when you buy a pickup at one store vs. the same item at another. <continued....>

 

[Phil Ressler]

Zephyr Silver background pt2

Zephyr Silver background pt2

<...continured from pt 1>
We had some finish quality reasons to evaluate bobbin materials so I set a rule that no material changes can be made to pickup designs without both empirical and listening tests, with listening tests being the final arbiter for whether a material or build change could pass as benign, beneficial or rejected for deleterious effects. I then asked Frank Falbo to oversee production of three pairs of test bed guitars (Tele-style, Strat-style and double humbuckers body) wherein each pair had necks made from the same board and body pairs made from the same board, chosen from Jean Larrivee’s stock. The test pairs of guitars are as alike as they can be made, down to same grain, weight and sonic attributes. We now listen to single-item changes in pickups without the compromise of poor sonic memory lost between pickup changes.

As Frank mentioned elsewhere, we had early in the process tested a variety of bobbin materials and identified glass fiber-fill nylon as a preferred material for consistency, finish quality, long-term durability and it happened to offer slight advantages in tone quality that were repeatable to our internal panel, including me. Suspicious of even twin guitars having differences, we listened to single-change pairs of otherwise identical configuration pickups in both guitars of a test pair. The sonic advantage followed the nylon glass-fill bobbins. Having confidence in the test bed guitars and repeatability of blind listening, we proceeded to develop what became Zephyr Silver, starting with silver wire against identical gauge copper as a single-item change.

Relevant sidebar: I asked the team to start with silver wire as the basis for these pickups on more than a hunch. In both guitar and high-end audio, silver wire in cables is controversial. Many people find silver in cables to be either bright (rising top end), unmusically revealing or just plain harsh. Honestly, I think this is more a failure by the cable designer to package silver in appropriate weave geometry and dielectrics, but the reservation about silver in cables is common. Given the skin effect of wire, many people in guitar and high-end audio find silver-plated copper wire to be preferable to pure silver solid. However, the experience of silver used in coil applications is usually different. In high-end audio, silver wire is almost universally praised in transformer windings and moving coil cartridges.

Just like pickups, many vintage moving coil cartridge designs are highly revered by experienced audiophiles who value tone and emotional fidelity in music over unrealistic detail and hyper-definition. To cite two examples, the Denon DL103 moving coil phono cartridge has been in production since 1964 and that company has made many coil wire variants of a static design. Silver, gold, silver-plated copper, gold-plated copper, six-nines copper, four-nines copper have all been offered additional to the original ordinary copper coils, with specific sonic character attributable to each. The legendary Ortofon SPU dating from about 1959 has also been offered since in silver and gold variants over original copper, with similar results. I own several variants of both. I also use vacuum tube power amplifiers with silver wire signal paths and silver transformer windings, as well as silver wire moving coil step-up transformers. The results are consistent and toneful. The common characteristics of silver wire in hi-fi applications involving coils are rich tone density, very quick transient response, high transparency without brightness or harshness, extended frequency response on both ends, strong and fast dynamics. I surmised it likely silver wire would deliver similar advantages in pickups for guitar, so asked to start there and evaluate. Even silver’s controversial sonic transparency should prove beneficial to transmitting the tonal differences between woods in bodies and necks.

We absolutely would have rejected silver wire immediately if it sounded worse, as well as if it sounded no better, than copper. What’s the point of silver at a higher price if it offers no improvement? But the sonic difference was clearly audible to us, including me, and the difference was both as-described in our marketing language, and unmistakably beneficial. Satisfied that silver was a good basis for our first Zephyr product, engineering proceeded to step through single-item additions, which were tested first as iterative changes to a copper pickup, then combined when they passed muster. I asked for a combination of three or four material steps forward for our first Zephyr product and after careful listening, we chose silver wire + cryogenic treatment for all of them, adding nylon glass fiber-fill bobbins and bi-metallic pole pieces for the humbuckers. These pickups sound sensational to me. <continued...>

 

[Phil Ressler]

Zephyr Silver pt 3

Zephyr Silver pt 3

<...continued from pt2>
I wrote the descriptive language regarding the sonic differences, and those descriptors reflect what I hear as both a guitar player and as a music lover listening to guitar. The descriptive language does blend guitar domain notions of tone with some of the well-developed (some among the curmudgeonly might say “florid”) vocabulary used in high-end audio circles to communicate gear differences in hi-fi over the past 35 years. Some of the guitar players in-house gave me the oblique squint when I first started describing what I heard, but as they listened, the hairy eyeball got holstered. The frequency-extending and tonal differences are variable in the degree of their audibility depending on the amp used to play through. A relatively wideband amp and driver makes these differences more vivid. A narrowband amp with rolled-off response and a very warm speaker may truncate the differences to your ears. The difference that blasts through even the most bandwidth-limited amp, however, is the burstiness of dynamics and responsiveness to touch. Nevertheless, I don’t remotely expect everyone to like these Zephyr Silver pickups, and fully accept that whether they are worth the money is an entirely subjective matter. If you prefer copper at any price, well…..we have plenty of that too.

At Seymour Duncan, we have a couple hundred pickup variants that are inspired by tradition. So I don’t make any apology for peeling off some of our time to try to move pickups forward. The first efforts of any such initiative are always expensive but please understand, this isn’t a money-grab. You all know that retail distribution of most products you buy determines much of their economics, right? Along the way everyone is taking fair and in this case by no means excessive profit on the cost of bringing products to you in a convenient manner. The fact of the matter is Zephyr Silver pickups cost us more to produce than copper, for a variety of reasons (including R&D), and that cost ripples through the pricing in distribution.

I don’t expect to sell large numbers of MSRP $1195 and $995 pickup sets. Frankly, as we wrote in our announcement, Zephyr products reflect what we like and see value in producing. The Zephyr line is for new ideas in pickups, not for tradition-influenced products. We can promise that Zephyr products will sound as we describe them but whether there are a few dozen or many thousands of people who agree those sound characteristics are valuable to them is both unknown and irrelevant. We’re not asking market permission to launch Zephyr products and we’re not risking large inventory on their success, either. Zephyr products plant ideas and will delight a certain kind of buyer. As they get accepted, Zephyr product features may find their way into more traditional models. In thirty years, perhaps we’ll have to release Antiquity Zephyr Silver just like we’re releasing Antiquity JB & Jazz now. Or maybe not.

We are emphatically not deviating from our working musician, high-value focus. We introduced 16 new products at NAMM. Only two are expensive and only the Zephyr Silver is unbound from tradition. The very limited edition Seymour Duncan 35 guitar is completely vintage-inspired, though it is a tribute to what was then an innovation by Seymour nearly 40 years ago. But Zephyr Silver has a role in charting out further development of guitar sound, and we’ll sell some, perhaps more than either of us expect. Response by artists, dealers, reps, press and average players attending NAMM was positive, interest was high, and even skeptical folks were receptive to our reasoning and objectives.

The last few things I’ll say for now are that in the Zephyr Series, silver is a start, not a finish. I expect to continue to research and evaluate further material options that will offer some lower prices and some still higher. And we will make individual vetted Zephyr features available ala carte as item options for Custom Shop orders. Also I would be remiss if I neglected to apologize to you all for the typos and errors in some of our initially-released product information. We have a number of new people working together for the first time, and we executed a very ambitious business and product agenda for the immovable deadline of NAMM. For a variety of process reasons that will be corrected, in the crunch of NAMM some errors were introduced in the workflow of publishing approved document copy to html web pages, and a few mistakes simply slipped by us despite best efforts to prevent them. I’m sorry for that. Nevertheless, Zephyr Silver sonic benefits are fully tenable as represented and I stand by what I hear. As a team we’re genuinely proud to introduce this series. Let's see what happens.

Best regards,
Phil

Phil Ressler
CEO
Seymour Duncan

 

[claytonc]

Re: Zephyr Silver pt 3

Re: Zephyr Silver pt 3

They read as very interesting. I would like to hear some clips comparing them to Antiquities, JB-Jazz, '59, PG, AIIpro sets. Clips done very diligently where the only variable is the pickup.

I applaud your courage to develop and push boundaries.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

hope you don't mind me merging the three threads into one phil. im curious what they sound like.

 

[Got_tone?]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

im curious what they sound like.

+1 I'm sure that clips would shut most ppl up about this being a "gimmick".

 

[Phil Ressler]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

We need to solve the problem of providing high-quality reference sound clips for legitimately comparative demo of all our pickups. We will do this and certainly include silver early. However, clips won't communicate the feel of Zephyr Silver in a guitar, the visceral aspect of the "burstiness" that's vivid to me. I think this is easily the least controversial benefit of Zephyr Silver but the one that's really only discoverable when fingers (in my case) or pick meet strings.

Phil

 

[WGTP]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

Welcome Phil. As I'm sure you know, making a $500,000 car that goes 200mph is cool, but making a $50,000 car that does it is even cooler.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke

I enjoy Mojo/Voodoo as much as anyone, but welcome a more scientific approach to pickup design. I would like to see a more "graphic" presentation of the difference in SD pickups to help folks make a very important decision.

 

[ganzosrevenge]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

Phil, can we order individual pickups and more importantly, pickup sets of zephyrs that are HSS or HSH or HH, and so forth?

Jason

 

[Kam]

Re: Zephyr Silver pt 3

Re: Zephyr Silver pt 3

Hey, welcome to the forum. Which is, I guess, your forum...so...welcome home? Um...yeah.

They read as very interesting. I would like to hear some clips comparing them to Antiquities, JB-Jazz, '59, PG, AIIpro sets. Clips done very diligently where the only variable is the pickup.

I applaud your courage to develop and push boundaries.

I agree with this, especially the last part. I think it's really cool that you're trying to push things forward and make new innovations when most people are content to just try to make the 1,000th new PAF replica (that's now even more PAFy!!) and I appreciate it. At this pricepoint it's extremely unlikely that I'll ever play a set of these, but I still like the fact that someone's introduced them to the world.

I'll like it even more if (when) they live up to the hype.

Looking forward to hearing clips, anyway. :friday:

EDIT: Oh, I'd also be really interested in hearing what each component adds to the overall tone of the pickups. If you're intending to offer them as seperate 'upgrades' to Custom Shop offerings, can we expect a description on the site of what effect, for example, adding bi-metallic polepieces to a regular pickup would have?

EDIT 2: Totally lol'd at the 'Junior Member' status. Can we get this guy some gloss?

 

[Phil Ressler]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

Jason,

Good question. We're here to accommodate our customers so I expect we'll come up with a way to accommodate HSH, HSS and single humbucker variants, perhaps via custom shop orders. I have a management team meeting tomorrow, so we'll figure this out. The immediate issue is desire to keep the packaging options simple initially so the retail channel can assimilate the new category, but I recognize we have highly experienced players here who instantly want more options. Frank or I will return with our answer.

Phil

 

[ganzosrevenge]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

Phil,

what do you mean by "retail channel"... guitar centers won't have $1,200 pickups in them, right?

 

[Phil Ressler]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

You're going to be able to buy Zephyr Silver from dealers who choose to stock them and you can order them from others. Whether/when Guitar Center might carry them is too soon to tell. Zephyr packaged pickups are not SD Custom Shop.

Phil

 

[Despair]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

I'm surprised at how many people are pulling in audiophile speaker cable discussion insanity, when that's got nothing to do with the use. High current applications aren't the same thing as low voltage.

I've snarked a bit about misuses of the design and speculated on price issues, but once Frank Falbo confirmed they were real, had no doubt they did something different, and was mostly prodding for more information, like what sort of magnets were involved and if anyone had been crazy enough to try them with the blackout preamp yet.

I'm puzzled by a number of decisions, though. So forward-looking in materials, yet so staid a pickup design. How about Parallel Axis polepieces, or maybe a solid bar instead of individual slugs (might be cheaper to manufacture as a bimetallic polepiece, as well as tonal differences)?

And welcome to the forum, and thanks for the background information!

 

[Phil Ressler]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

>>I'm surprised at how many people are pulling in audiophile speaker cable discussion insanity, when that's got nothing to do with the use.<<

When I refer to audiophile applications as inspiration, I'm not thinking so much about speaker cables but rather silver applications in phono and line-level interconnects, moving coil, interstage, and output transformer windings, moving coil phono cartridges and even tape heads.

>>I'm puzzled by a number of decisions, though. So forward-looking in materials, yet so staid a pickup design.<<

We're not nearly done. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Zephyr is going to be a product series and Zephyr Silver is just a start. We took a step that we could R&D in a short period and launch at NAMM. Now we go from here. You'll see further development from this point of departure.

Phil

 

[J Moose]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

I'm surprised at how many people are pulling in audiophile speaker cable discussion insanity, when that's got nothing to do with the use. High current applications aren't the same thing as low voltage.

See Phils second post, third paragraph. He brings up the silver cable and audiophile background...

Anyway, question for Phil... or Frank, or whomever really.

The frequency-extending and tonal differences are variable in the degree of their audibility depending on the amp used to play through. A relatively wideband amp and driver makes these differences more vivid. A narrowband amp with rolled-off response and a very warm speaker may truncate the differences to your ears. The difference that blasts through even the most bandwidth-limited amp, however, is the burstiness of dynamics and responsiveness to touch.

What exactly would be an example of a "wideband" guitar amp?

I know what your getting at, I think... but in 20 years of playing I've never ever heard anyone refer to guitar amps as 'wide' or 'narrowband' before.

Technically speaking every guitar amp is a giant bandpass filter with massive comb filtering... even before ring modulators and octave dividers get involved.

So to get the "best" impression, what would the best thing to plug into with these? Is a blackface super with a quad of Weber alnico 10's "wide" enough?

Would love to see some examples...

 

[Phil Ressler]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

Moose,

"Wideband" in guitar amps, short of an acoustic amp with a tweeter, is a relative thing. We found the clean channel of the Mesa Mark V to be exceptionally revealing for our repeatable tests, with some sonic attributes further magnified in the high-gain channels. That was a Mark V head played through Boogie 12" wide baffle cabs. Additionally, I've been playing Zephyr Silver and copper pickup guitars through a Mark V combo, a Mesa Blue Angel combo, Mesa Mark IV EV12L combo, a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a Carvin Sweet 16 (surprisingly revealing), plus all of these amps directly driving a Zu Druid Mark 4-08 wideband hi-fi speaker both with the supertweeter masked off and unmasked. The Zu FRD (full range driver) is in a Griewe load cabinet with pretty flat response from 36Hz - 12.5 kHz. Unmasking the supertweeter extends response to 25kHz. The Zu FRD has beautiful, truly exceptional guitar tone. Listening with the supertweeter unmasked is mostly for purposes of spotlighting assets and liabilities obscured by a normal guitar amp speaker.

But, you know, I can even appreciate the difference through my Big Industries Ronnie Montrose 9v portable amp.

Phil

 

[J Moose]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

Listening with the supertweeter unmasked is mostly for purposes of spotlighting assets and liabilities obscured by a normal guitar amp speaker.

Not that I'm trying to be a ball buster here, but what's the point of that?

Do ya'll really anticipate people plugging Marshall heads into hi-fi cabs?

Ditch the 4x12 with greenbacks for a Meyer line array?

Really??

Again, never seen or even heard of anyone doing that with an "electric" guitar before...

 

[Phil Ressler]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

>>Do ya'll really anticipate people plugging Marshall heads into hi-fi cabs?<<

No. Not at all. I used the Zu crossoverless speaker for my own edification regarding what's going on "out of range" for a guitar applications. But their FRD in Griewe loading alone is coincidentally a really good electric guitar speaker. This would be true for almost no other hi-fi speaker in existence, certainly nothing multi-way with a crossover sitting between the amp and the speaker motor.

>>Ditch the 4x12 with greenbacks for a Meyer line array?

Really??<<

No, and emphatically no.

>>Again, never seen or even heard of anyone doing that with an "electric" guitar before...<<

We have an exceptional sounding set of pickups in Zephyr Silver. I never claimed my methods for assisting us getting there have been, are or will be conventional. Play them through a guitar amp of your choosing and see what you think. Forget about my testing if you want. Again, putting aside all the tonal improvements I cite, the touch and dynamic properties can be compelling for anyone, through anything.

Phil

 

[xxxplorer]

Re: Zephyr Silver background

My only concern is now with silver pickups... would one need to change all the wires and or pots too silver too really benefit from all the 'better' qualities?

I am curious too the 'improvements', but I also think that people like Bill and Becky Lawrence have thought about some of these 'hi fi' type scenarios with they L5000 series and what not... they are a different beast from a typical sounding pickup... not aimed at vintage tones and aimed for 'clear and pristine'... but they will cost only $60.00, and ALLOT of people like me just don't want clear and pristine and perfect... we want dirty and character and nasty 'lo fi' sounds.

Again, it seems very cool and pushing the envelope, but it does seem a little above most people. Also a little concerning with all the 'different' JB models when on paper there shouldn't be any difference, even after 'aging' as magnets don't age that hard from what I read.

I would love too see a test guitar setup at Guitar Center or other chains that can afford such a setup.

This makes me want to sell guitars at my pet store too try these at whole sale lol.